Note About Adding Pictures

[onlyhomelites]

Everyone loves pictures, but how we use them can affect the forum and the costs of operating it. As you are making a new post, you'll see a button in the upper right called "Add Attachment". This is very quick and easy to use when adding a picture that is stored on your computer, but this counts "against" the file storage limits of the forum. Our current plan allows for 500MB and we are at 401MB.

So if you have a free photo account online like imageshack or flickr, please upload photos there and use the "bbcode" option to share them here. I know this can be a bit confusing, but Dan (sweepleader) has been working on some revisions to the picture instructions that will make it a bit easier. I personally use flickr and their share code is literally a cut & paste.

In no way do I want to "guilt" anyone into not posting pictures, I'm just respectfully asking you to use other photo hosting sites when you have the option, especially for the big stuff.

Thanks!

Leon

[onlyhomelites]

Since I recommended Flickr, I thought I'd better post some instructions as the ProBoards format is less than user friendly at times. I'm going to assume if you are reading this that you've already setup albums or at least have loaded a few pics to Flickr and can find them.

1. Navigate to the picture that you'd like to post.  Once there, look for the "share" icon in the lower right corner.  In the following pic, it is circled in red: 
2. Once you click the "share" icon, you will get a screen that has tons of options.  For ProBoards forums, like House of Homelite, I've found the BBcode to be the easiest to use.  Click that option, which is circled in red: 
3. The next screen will generate the link that you will want to copy and then paste into your post.  You can also select the display size of your pic here.  I find that either "medium" setting is more than big enough without bogging down the loading time.  Make sure you select your image size first and then copy the link.  Also, make sure to copy the entire link, not just what is visible in the initial screen. 
4. Now paste your link(s) into your post.  That's it!  

A few general tips to make the experience better:

• I like to type my text first and then put in pictures.  This way you don't accidentally modify pasted BBcode.
• Make the picture code it's own line and remember that the final post will have the picture appear wherever in the post you pasted your BBcode.
• If you make a mistake and something doesn't post properly, no worries you can always edit your post.
• For these instructions to work, you must have put your pics into an album (not sure why, another member found this out the frustrating way!).
• If you get stumped, ask for help...we'll get you going!

[onlyhomelites]

Bump.

We still have quite a few pictures coming in as forum attachments, so I'm again asking folks to use other sites to host the photos and link them here. Flickr is very easy to use, it's free and it offers 1TB of storage!

The "base" plan at HOH only offers 200MB of storage and today's hi-res pics eat that up quickly. I've upgraded the forum so that we have room to spare at the moment, but I'd rather not keep upgrading as it isn't free.

With this in mind, I believe we should only use the attachment feature to preserve pics & files that are essential to HOH, like the posts about decoding serial #'s, etc...

I've created a HOH account at Flickr and I am slowly going to move some older attachments over and get them hosted on Flickr. You won't notice any difference in the posts other than clicking on a picture will take you offsite. This process is a pain in the posterior, so I'd rather not make this the norm.

In addition, I've modified the site permissions to restrict attachment sizes to 2 per post and 1MB maximum per attachment. This obviously doesn't affect old posts, so nothing will be lost.

If anyone has any questions or concerns, please send a PM or an email.

Thanks!